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Complete Schedule of Congress Events Don't be mislead by the title: "technical sessions" are lively and management-focused oral presentations that will approach a topic from various disciplines, perspectives and experiences. Our objective is to combine the three Congress themes in each technical session, providing an integrated perspective on the topic with presentations from science and technology; policy, culture, and economics; and case studies of management experience. Technical sessions will be held Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (August 16–18, 1999), with a set of sessions in the morning and another in the early afternoon. Each technical session will be two hours in duration and may host three to five spoken presentations. To accommodate a diverse array of topics, several technical sessions will occur concurrently during each time period. The technical sessions are as follows:
Technical Session Abstracts Session title: The mission of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program is to develop a longterm comprehensive plan that will restore the ecological health and improve water management for beneficial uses of the San Francisco Bay-Delta system. The Ecosystem Restoration Program (ERP) is the principle mechanism that CALFED will use to restore the health of the Bay-Delta ecosystem, and is predicated upon an ecosystem-based management approach that emphasizes restoration of ecological processes. Two technical sessions will assess the ERP from two perspectives—political and scientific. The purpose of the political session is to promote a broader understanding of the benefits of the Ecosystem Restoration Program (ERP) and the trade-offs which were made to ensure broad stakeholder support. Invited speakers include Mary Nichols (California Resources Agency Secretary), Brenda Jahn Southwick (Legal Counsel for the Farm Bureau Federation), Tom Graff (Senior Attorney of the Environmental Defense Fund) and Pete Rhoads (Metropolitan Water District of Southern California). They will provide a variety of perspectives on the political objectives driving the ERP and how well those objectives are being met. Session title: The purpose of the scientific session is to outline the CALFED science program and invite comments and suggestions on the ERP's indicators of success, adaptive management approach, approaches to monitoring and use of outside scientific expertise and how well the Program integrates research and implementation of restoration projects. Invited speakers include: Larry Smith (USGS-CALFED project), Wim Kimmerer (Romberg Tiburon Center), Rodney Fujita (Environmental Defense Fund), Joy Zedler, (Center for Restoration Ecology, University of Wisconsin), and Nicholas Aumen (private consultant on South Florida projects formerly at the South Florida Water Management District). Session title: An effective approach to addressing complex ecological policy problems must move beyond traditional "command and control" approaches. The concept of "ecosystem health" is one such possible construct for a more effective approach towards understanding, evaluating and implementing ecological policy. However, this concept is value-dependent, and thus may be controversial. Robert Lackey (US Environmental Protection Agency) will introduce this topic. Lively commentary on the merits and pitfalls of this concept in environmental management will be provided by others, including Wayne Landis (Institute of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA) and Allan Fitzsimmons (Balanced Resource Solutions, Virginia, USA). Session title: The Global Integrity Project has brought together twenty-five scientists and philosophers from 1992 to 1999 to research, define, and measure ecological integrity and the effects of dis-integrity on all life. Some representative members of this group will present their findings from ecology, biology, epidemiology, philosophy, and economics. This session will relate these findings to the public policies required to implement ecosystem health. Presentations will be provided by Laura Westra (University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada), Colin Soskolne (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada), Jim Karr (University of Washington, Seattle, USA), and William Rees (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada). Session title: Proposed on the basis of sound conservation and sustainable development, the Greater Addo National Park in South Africa is a compelling case study of the interaction of ecosystem health, economic opportunity, and social well-being. The proposed Park is approximately 400,000 hectares in size. Criteria for the Park boundaries include ecosystem functioning (including the potential to improve the genetic viability of populations of certain large mammals (e.g., elephants, black rhino). Graham Kerley (Terrestrial Ecology Research Unit, University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa) will introduce this session with insights on the threat of desertification to ecosystem health and services in the Thicket Biome, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Threats to the biodiversity of the area and opportunities for conservation will be explored by M.H. Knight (South African National Parks). The diversity of local interests in this Park will be presented (Kerley). André Boshoff (Terrestrial Ecology Research Unit, University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa) will provide insight on the conservation and social opportunities provided by a healthy ecosystem. Session title: Culture and tradition, when studied within the context of ecosystem management, can provide useful insights towards managing for sustainability and developing positive relationships between human and ecosystem health. Hans de Kruijf (National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands) will examine the influence of attitudes on nature valuation and ecosystem management with specific examples from Benin, Bhutan, Costa Rica, and The Netherlands. The role of culture in ecosystem management in Bhutan will be illuminated with a presentation by Karma Ura (Ministry of Planning, Royal Government of Bhutan) entitled "Nomads Gamble: How herders preserve communal pastures." Researchers in Kenya are finding that an effective approach to integrating farmers as the primary managers of the ecosystem in an Agroecosystem Health Project in Kiambu District is to make use of old customs. Thomas Gitau (Department of Public Health, University of Nairobi, Kenya) explains how this approach can strengthen critical social structures, revitalizing the community and leading to a fresh start in ecosystem management. Session title: Agriculture is a global industry with direct and diverse impacts on the health of human populations and many ecosystems. The increasing intensity of agricultural practices in recent decades has been accompanied by an increase in the types and intensities of such impacts. Marc Schenker (University of California, Davis) will chair and introduce this technical session which will explore human and ecosystem health impacts from agriculture from the perspective of different media (air, water, soil) and various vectors (pesticides, infectious agents, agricultural chemicals). A keynote address will be provided by Paul Gunderson (Marshield Medical Research Foundation), who will give an overview of current and future issues. Presentations may be provided by Kevin Reilly (Department of Health Services, California), Richard Jackson (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia), Robert Flochinni and Dean Cliver (University of California, Davis). Session title: Despite the nearly universal agreement among ecologists, conservationists, and action agencies on the undesirability of invasions of non-indigenous species into new regions, eradication of incipient populations remains an extraordinarily contentious issue. One reason for this is that the use of chemical pesticides to achieve eradication usually arouses public opposition. However, another reason is that the eradication concept (as distinct from criteria) has seldom been formally addressed. For example: What constitutes biological eradication? Are there preconditions for launching a program? Why is eradication so extraordinarily difficult? In this session, chaired by James Carey (University of California, Davis), four invasion biologists from different disciplinary backgrounds will present their perspectives on concepts and criteria for eradication. The session will end with a round-table discussion focusing on the development of a unifying framework for eradication policy. Session title: The prairie ecosystem study (PECOS) is a major interdisciplinary study of sustainability and ecosystem health in the semi-arid prairie ecoregion of the Canadian part of the Great Plains. PECOS involved more than forty professors from the universities of Saskatchewan and Regina, and included research projects for 29 graduate students. The session will focus on issues of scale from an interdisciplinary perspective, and begins with an overview of PECOS and the study area by Darwin Anderson. Human health is discussed at a general or study-wide scale in a paper by Gail Remus that focuses on rural seniors; in a more intensive evaluation of the impacts of environmental exposure to pesticides on human health in a part of the study area presented by Helen McDuffie; and in selected case studies. Temporal and spatial dimensions of change in agriculture and adaptation to change are discussed by Lisa Dale-Burnett, and Todd Radenbaugh will present his work on ecoregion level changes in breeding bird guilds due to agricultural impacts. A simulation model that integrates economic, ecological, and biodiversity outcomes of particular land use policies will be presented by Kenneth Belcher. Additional papers will focus on agriculture and community as affected by factors of global scale, and on particular aspects of the land and biota. Session title: A number of sources have provided guidance to establish sustainable development indicators for the minerals and metals industry, yet many challenges remain. Mark Burgham of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) will discuss NRCan's involvement in the process to identify a set of values common to all stakeholders in the Canadian context. Deborah Shields (USDA Forest Service) will examine how the selection and interpretation of minerals indicators are influenced by scale. Ross Jeffree (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization) will review his experience in applying measures of sustainable development at the mine site. Joy Jacqueline Pereira will discuss the study of mineral resource flow as an indicator of ecosystem health, with specific information from the Langat Basin, Malaysia. Session title: Managing national parks and equivalent reserves for ecosystem health is a daunting challenge for today's managers in many respects. Philosophy and human values form the foundation blocks of all management throughout the short history (less than 125 years) of national parks, yet because of a variety of evolving societal dimensions, there remains much disagreement about what "ecosystem health" is, and even more dissent on how to maintain it through management. Virtually all parties agree they want to maintain or restore the ecosystem health of parks and equivalent reserves, but disagree on what health is, how to maintain it, and how or even if it's desirable to restore it. Session title: This session will focus on the ecosystem effects of climate change and on whether ecosystems can adapt to these changes. Stephen Schneider (Stanford University) will introduce the session with an address entitled "Can Ecosystems Adapt to 21st Century Climate?" He will contrast expected future global changes with known paleo-ecological ones to help estimate the adaptability of future ecosystems to expected climate change scenarios. Alan Pounds (Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, Costa Rica) will talk about climate change in highland forests at Monteverde, Costa Rica (in relation to large-scale changes in tropical oceans/atmosphere) and the consequences for populations of birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Data collected over the past two decades provide insights into changes in montane hydrology and, subsequently, changes in populations of birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Jeff Price (American Bird Conservancy, Boulder, Colorado) will talk about climate change and birds. Models of the breeding distributions of North American birds predict that most species will undergo some shift in their ranges. In parts of northern Minnesota and southern Ontario, this could lead to an avifauna with up to 15 fewer species of wood warblers than currently occur. Unless all of the components of the ecosystem change at the same rate—an unlikely prospect—this potential disruption of the ecosystem could lead to major impacts on forest health. Rafe Sagarin (Hopkins Marine Station, University of California) will focus on the use of historical data sets in understanding ecosystem responses to climate change and the importance of long-term monitoring programs, with a secondary focus on responses of marine invertebrates to climate change, based on his own studies from Monterey, California. Session title: Hal Salwasser (U.S. Forest Service, Albany, California) will begin this session with a case study of forest restoration in the eastern Sierra Nevada region of California. A multidisciplinary assessment of the health of the region’s ecosystems and the needs and values of the human communities, called the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, is now being translated into specific actions. Peter Brang (Federal Institute of Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research, Switzerland) will speak on restoring ‘naturalness’ in secondary forest ecosystems in Switzerland and central Europe that have experienced human impacts for centuries. Here, restoration of naturalness is perceived as a way to increase the ability of forest ecosystems to fulfill multiple human needs. The concept of ecological stability will be discussed in relation to the response of forest ecosystems to human and natural disturbances. Stanley Krugman (Natural Resource Specialist, Virginia, USA) will provide a report on two pilot programs in central Europe initiated in 1990 to apply the best available scientific information and technology towards forest ecological restoration in a major park and a large mountain forest landscape. Michael Calver (Murdoch University, Australia) will compare current multiple-use forest management of the jarrah forest of Western Australia with the standards of the ‘precautionary principle’ to see whether or not the precautionary approach has been truly applied. The precautionary principle is one mechanism for assessing which economic uses or developments are least likely to degrade ecosystem health and thus can be a useful tool in maintaining a healthy ecosystem while still deriving economic benefit. Session title: "It is exciting that it now seems feasible to do landscape health assessment using remote imagery and landscape fragmentation" remarks the organizer of this session, G.P. Patil (Distinguished Professor and Director, Penn State Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics, University Park, PA USA). Using various technologies, it is now possible to provide snapshots of landscapes indicative of various features of interest pertaining to human societies, plant and animal communities, aquatic networks, etc. This information can be represented in various kinds of multicolor maps that depict political, natural, methodological, or other features. These multicolor maps provide a basis for comparative assessments of regions within a policy making and implementation context. It is also possible to extract meaningful profiles of management units, such as watersheds, that can be calibrated and compared in order to assess and manage watersheds of a region. These current developments are part of the 'environmental and ecological information superhighway' and are at the cutting edge of regional policy research with remote imagery and geospatial information. Some prototype efforts and outputs are in place and others are in progress in USA, Canada, and Europe. Issues relating to the technology, data mining, data integration, and applications to management (with actual case studies) will be introduced by G.P. Patil and further discussed by a series of speakers that may include: Bruce Jones (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Las Vegas, Nevada), Elizabeth Smith, U.S. EPA, North Carolina), Orazio Rossi (University of Parma, Italy), and Ashbindu Singh (United Nations Environment Program, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA). Session title: This session has been designed to cover topics such as air quality, toxic chemicals, climate change strategies and emerging human diseases. People influence the ecosystems in which they live by using the environment in an unsustainable or sustainable manner. Examples of unsustainable practices include the overexploitation of natural resources, such as forests and fossil fuels, and the overproduction and reckless disposal of waste products. One of the greatest challenges we face to ensure our long-term health and the health of our environment is to create a more sustainable society, or in other words, to embrace the concept of sustainable development. A common theme throughout this session will be the linking of the economic costs to environmental and ecological degradation for which human activities are responsible. Presenters will discuss health issues in relation to the Canadian Climate Change Strategy. This work covers health-economic assessments, health monitoring and surveillance, health impacts modeling and analysis, public outreach and integrated policy devel ment and risk management. Other scientists will present a review of recent epidemiological research in Canada which links air quality and health and will discuss economic approaches to evaluating the costs and health benefits of controlling air pollutants. Further presenters will discuss aspects of emerging disease in a North American context. Participants: Session title: Many worldwide epidemic diseases (particularly those transmitted by insects) are known to be highly sensitive to climate and weather, but caustative realtionships between environmental factors and epidemic disease activity remain poorly understood. This workshop aims to provide updates about the potential for applying remotely sensed data to disease stratification, monitoring and surveillance, as well as its potential to support a predictive capabilty to determine and manage future epidemics. "Ecology of Infectious Diseases" will be presented online in a live Webcast on Wednesday, 1:15–3:15, via NASA Quest. The cyber-audience will have opportunites to ask questions of the experts. Session Presenters/Affiliations:Panel Chair: Compton J. Tucker, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD Jonathan Cox, Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK Simon Iain Hay, TALA Research Group, Dept. of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK William K. Reisen, Arbovirus Field Station, School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Vector Borne Disease Research, University of California, Davis. Session title: This session focuses on new techniques and the integration of existing techniques that decisionmakers can use to assess risk to ecosystem health within and between watersheds. It opens with a discussion by James Andreason of a terrestrial index of ecological integrity (TIEI) to help managers make watershed-level decisions that lead to further improvements in water quality. This will be followed by Megan Mehaffey¹s description of the ongoing study to evaluate the relationships between landscape patterns and the quality of water in the Catskill and Delaware Basins in Southern New York State that constitute primary drinking water sources for New York City. The session then moves to the mid-West where Florence Fulk will compare various chemical exposure criteria, using sensitivity analysis, for their application to watersheds and sites within. Kenneth Lubinski takes us further west to the Upper Mississippi River where the development of consensus criteria and a set of metrics to support those criteria are being developed in parallel to establish a scientifically supportable and socially acceptable definition of river ecological health. The session wraps up with a presentation by Lester Yuan that will demonstrate the applicability of a knowledge-based decision-support system—for assessing the effects of human activities upon the ecological integrity of streams draining a watershed—across watersheds of various types. Session title: Terry Flum leads off this session with a description of the U.S. EPA's Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) program designed to identify ecosystems that are likely to experience reduced ecological integrity as a result of natural or man-induced stressors. It makes effective use of remote sensing and other data (with examples from the mid-Atlantic States) that can be georeferenced to locate likely exposures to single and multiple stressors. Frank McCormick follows with a discussion of the criticality of selecting the appropriate target fish species when conducting fish tissue contaminant assessments as part of regional stream surveys. Data from the mid-Atlantic Highlands Assessment showed some real surprises; the findings will help guide future study designs. Ivan Vassenev will describe the principles and modules of a regional expert information system for assessing and modeling the ecological state of soil cover (SAMES) and discuss its application for geostatistical analysis and spatial interpolation of soil ecological data. I.V. Florinsky will discuss how they are linking digital terrain modeling with conventional predictive methods to help address a major problem of environmental degradation in Canada, the salinization of soils in the Prairie Ecozone of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Finally, the session wraps with a description, by Eric Hyatt, of the new approach that is being piloted by the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) to address specific monitoring problems associated with the western United States. Session title: Multiple management objectives are especially challenging in a system subjected to numerous ecological stresses. Clear Lake (California) is an ancient, shallow, highly productive lake with rich habitats for migrating waterfowl and fish-eating birds and mammals. Local residents also use its abundant resources for recreation, water supply, and active sport and commercial fisheries. However, it also has a well-documented history of anthropogenic stresses. It has lost more than 85 percent of its wetlands (resulting in hyper-eutrophication and abundant noxious cyanobacterial blooms), is highly contaminated with mercury (and other contaminants), was the first site to identify the deleterious effects of large concentrations of organochlorine pesticides on bird populations (popularized in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring), has had its native fish fauna replaced nearly completely by alien species and is the location of a US Environmental Protection Agency Superfund hazardous waste site. As such, it represents an excellent laboratory ecosystem to study the effects of multiple stresses and their management. Ultimately, our ability to understand and manage ecosystems will benefit greatly from studies of systems like Clear Lake. Session title: Subject to complex environmental stresses over the last half century, Lake Tahoe—at the border of California and Nevada—is now the focus of a basin-wide environmental restoration. Long-term monitoring and a multi-disciplinary approach has been essential in resolving problems of atmospheric pollution, water quality deterioration, and policy-related conflicts arising between development interests and environmental conservation. Charles Goldman (University of California, Davis), winner of the 1998 Albert Einstein World Award of Science, will speak and will lead this session. Session title:
Session title: Jim Giattina, chairman of this session sets the tone with a brief discussion of the ecological issues that have been made top priority by the Gulf of Mexico Program which he directs. These include: (1) public health concerns associated with contaminated shellfish and recreational waters; (2) hazardous algal blooms, nutrient impairments and hypoxia/anoxia; (3) loss of essential habitat; and (4) introductions of non-indigenous species. From this background, Jim will then probe in greater depth a particularly challenging problem to the Program the impact of excessive nutrients on the oxygen levels in the critical fish breeding and feeding grounds of the Texas Louisiana shelf. In a related presentation, Curt Edmonds discusses how remotely sensed data are being used to assess impacts related to land-use practices over a 20-year period in the Tensas River Basin of Louisiana and to target areas of particular ecological concern. In the next presentation, Jerry Boggs describes the Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan for San Diego Bay under development by a committee of 12 federal/state/local/private organizations. The Plan is a prelude to implementation of an environmental assessment under the NEPA. In the final talk of the session, John Johnston presents the parallel development of both a scientific conceptual model for assessing comparative risk and a software framework to support such assessments. It includes such examples as the edibility and sustainability of estuarine fishes and the relationships of non chemical stresses. Session title: Effective monitoring of the health of marine ecosystems depends on an understanding of the relationship between biotic and abiotic components of the systems, and the processes that link them. Then, a subset of components may be selected as indicators of the health status. These indicators may vary according to geographic location, scale of concern, and other factors. In this session, a set of conceptual and case study papers is presented from diverse geographic regions. The relationship between water quality and plankton diversity in a marine ecosystem, Tamil Nadu, South India will be explored by Y.N.K. Eswari (University of Madras, India). Pamila K. Yochem (Senior Research Biologist, Hubbs Seaworld Research Institute, San Diego, California) will discuss indicators of healthy marine ecosystems of the Antarctic. A national approach to marine ecosystem monitoring and assessment (The Coastal 200 National Survey) will be explored by J. Kevin Summers (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Gulf Breeze, Florida USA). Susanna T.Y. Tong (University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA) will present an exploratory approach to assessing the influence of environmental factors on fish community distribution and health. Session title: California is a state rich in biological diversity and a national leader in agricultural production. Farmers, agricultural agencies, and universities within the state are finding effective means to combine agricultural production with conservation of native species and ecosystems. Terrell P. Salmon (University of California Davis, California) chairs this session of five case studies in agroecology. Miguel A. Altieri (University of California, Berkeley) will present an agroecological framework to achieve ecological health in agroecosystems. John H. Anderson (Hedgerow Farms, Winters, California) will discuss restoring habitat and watershed function to Sacramento Valley farmland. Fallow land patches and ecosystem health in an agroecosystem is the topic to be presented by John Hopkins (Director, Fallow Land Project, Center for Water and Wildland Resources, University of California, Davis. Jeff Mitchell (Department of Vegetable Crops and Weed Science, University of California, Davis) will discuss reduced disturbance agroecosystems in California. "Installation of insectary hedgerows on farms: management practices and costs" is the topic to be presented by Mary Kimball (Yolo County Resource Conservation District ) and Rachel Long (Yolo County Cooperative Extension, Woodland, California). Session title: Case studies from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States are presented in this session on the impacts of agriculture on ecosystem health. Insights are provided on the appropriate use of the concept of ecosystem health and opportunities for mitigation. David Hinton (Program Director, Ecotoxicology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis) will discuss multiple stressors in the Sacramento River Watershed. "The effect of livestock on stream health: An agroecosystem health approach" is the topic of a paper to be presented by Dominique Charron (Department of Population Medicine, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada). Irrigated agriculture and water quality in the Upper Klamath Basin will be explored in a presentation by Stephen Kaffka (Department of Agronomy and Range Science,University of California, Davis). Anwar Ghani (AgResearch, Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre, Hamilton, New Zealand) will pose the question "Are soil microbial and chemical indicators sensitive to pastoral soil management?" Hugh Pringle (Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia) will share his research on assessing rangelands from different perspectives. Session title: Sustainability requires that everybody can secure his or her quality of life within the means of nature. Living beyond our ecological means will lead to the destruction of humanity’s only home. Having insufficient natural resources and living in unsatisfactory and inequitable ways will cause destructive conflict and degrade our social fabric. Therefore we need to know whether people enjoy their lives and whose quality of life is systematically threatened. At the same time, we need to start monitoring whether we are living within our ecological means or at what rate humanity is depleting the biosphere. Mathis Wackernagel (Redefining Progress, San Francisco, California USA) will provide an opening presentation on two corresponding tools: a) the "ecological footprint" to assess the ecological constraints and b) the "sustainability barometer" to explore people’s quality of life. Both tools are used to build sustainability strategies for nations, municipalities and households. Deltef van Vuuren (National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM/BIS), The Netherlands) will present a comparative 'ecological footprint' study. His research compared Benin, Bhutan, Costa Rica, and the Netherlands, and provides with some surprising results. Alan Ewert (Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana USA) will turn the issue on its head by examining the impact of ecosystem health on quality of life, underlining that ecological sustainability will also generate immediate benefits for people’s well-being.
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